Dartmouth is the rural Ivy. Located in Hanover, New Hampshire, a small town with classic college vibes, Dartmouth combines exceptional academics with the quintessential college experience that so many students crave. The for the Class of 2029 was 6%.
If you were offered a spot on the Dartmouth waitlist, it can be overwhelming to try to figure out what to do next. “ұԱ,” “fewer than 10 percent of applicants are offered a place on the wait list, and the number of candidates offered admission from the wait list varies, from zero in some years to dozens in others.” To try to make sense of what your odds really are, though, let’s look at some real numbers.
For the fall of 2024, Dartmouth 2,589 students a place on the waitlist and 2,189 claimed their spot. Only 29 applicants, or 1.3%, were eventually accepted. One year earlier, for the fall of 2023, a similar number of students were offered a spot on the waitlist, 1,606 took Dartmouth up on that offer. No one — — were admitted.
We’re not sharing that to be discouraging, but rather to set expectations. Choosing to try your luck at the Dartmouth waitlist is a big gamble. To make it pay off, you need to be both hedging your bets and working all angles. Now, let’s go into what that means.
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Dartmouth offers most guidance than most top schools around what to do once you’ve been offered a spot on the waitlist if you are still interested in attending. Below, we break this down into four simple steps.
Step One: Join the Waitlist
Submit the immediately. You will only be considered for a spot in the Class of 2030 if you submit that form, which is accessed through the applicant portal. While Dartmouth will not begin seriously considering waitlisted applicants until soon before, or after, the decision deadline in May, you want them to know that you are still in the game.
This form is fast, and should only take you a few minutes to complete and submit.
Step Two: Commit to a School
Lining up a school for the fall is not optional — it’s mandatory. You need to have somewhere to go in the fall, as waiting a year and then reapplying to an atrocious plan. It is extremely hard to do something that is game-changing for your college applications between senior spring and when college applications are due in the fall. You also would not have the support of your high school, as they have a new senior class to deal with. It is much easier, instead, to be open to the idea of transferring should you not get into Dartmouth and end up somewhere you aren’t entirely thrilled with. Or, who knows, you may fall in love with your back-up once you are there.
Step Three: Strengthen Your Application
Once you have a school lined up for the fall, it’s time to get to work on Dartmouth. Dartmouth is very open about what they want from waitlisted applicants, and equally willing to receive more from you to strengthen your candidacy as a waitlisted applicant. That said, you need to be careful about how you update Dartmouth so that they are left excited to find a spot for you, not exhausted and overwhelmed.
So, what do they want? Dartmouth updated grades and a written update — which we call a Letter of Continued Interest, or LOCI.
What they , though, are large files, albums full of images, or anything really that doesn’t fit into a short text document, like a Word document. Sharing important news is good, but bombarding admissions with every little thing that has happened to you in the past three months will actually work against you. In short, more is not better.
After requesting that your high school send your spring grades, it’s time to write this update. You want to be succinct and strategic, as there is no guarantee that the admissions officers will even read everything that you send as an update. They don’t owe you their time. Rather, you need to earn it. We have found that a short, one-page LOCI is the perfect balance of informative and respectful.
What goes in that LOCI is pretty simple.
Opening: It’s a letter, so start it like one. “Dear Dartmouth Admissions,” is perfect. Then spend 3-4 sentences introducing yourself, reminding them of your prospective major, reinforcing that Dartmouth remains your first choice, and stating that you will enroll if accepted.
Update: Next comes the update. This should be at least one, but no more than 4, meaningful updates to your application. These updates should not come out of left field, but should instead build upon things that you emphasized in your application. Awards and recognitions are obvious things to mention, but you can also include things like finishing up a project you are especially proud of, organizing a community or school event, raising money for a cause you care about, or making progress on an ongoing research project. The update will be the bulk of your LOCI, but remember that the whole letter still needs to fit on one page with size 12 font and normal margins.
Reinforce Interest: After the update, you need to reinforce that Dartmouth is your first choice by including a few things about your prospective major that specifically attract you. This could be a program within the major that you hope to take part in, a professor whose research speaks to your specific interests, or a pair of courses that you feel would recontextualize your understanding of something you are passionate about. Keep this paragraph short, maybe 3-5 sentences.
Close: At the end, you need to write a two-sentence conclusion that thanks them for their time and consideration. Close with “Sincerely,” or something similar. Then you are done!
Dartmouth to receive this letter sometime “in late April or early May.” We advise our students to send it well ahead of May 1, but also not to rush. If there is the possibility of having a great update to send…you are just waiting on the final announcement — wait. Dartmouth only wants to hear from you once, so you have to make it count.
Step Four: Wait
The final step is to be patient. You’ll typically hear from Dartmouth in May or June, but they still making offers to students until later in summer. This can be excruciating, but that’s just how it goes when you are playing the waitlist game.
Getting off of the Dartmouth waitlist is unlikely some years and impossible others — and you can’t know your chances when you are in the middle of it. But you also can’t win a game you don’t play.
We help waitlisted students defy the odds. Email us to learn more.